Items discussed at today’s Support Team meetup:
WordPress 4.4 beta 4 testing
It’s up to beta 4, please test and test again.
Give Aaron Jorbin’s WordPress 4.4: Field Guide a read, it’s very good. Aaron also suggested in the Slack #forums channel to read up on the new responsive image features. The comments there can provide material for solutions that 4.4 users may need.
Community Summit Agenda 2015 for Support
Please consider commenting on the agenda post even if you are not attending. While the summit is 2 days, it’s important that agenda items get represented where there’s interest.
For those that can’t attend in person we’re hoping to sort out something. The summit is a unconference so what actually happens may not be what we intended. It will be fun and I’m sure a lot will be accomplished.
OMGWTFBBQ draft
The draft will get posted after RC1 is dropped. This will include the usual boiler plate material as well as (naturally) 4.4 specific items. If I miss it or am unable to then Mika will post the draft.
IRC moderation
Clarification that @clorith didn’t post on last week’s summary: moderation in IRC does not mean ban people. That’s an option of last resort. Before that happens or is even considered a polite talking to is the way to go. Most people will respond to being asked to be civil and anyone can do that step, moderator or not.
Commercial theme (or plugin) support in the forums
How should moderators treat commercial support topics? A user who posts “I need help with ” usually does not know they’re postin in the wrong place. What they should be doing is contacting the author for support directly on the author’s own site.
After some reiteration (check the transcript, collaboration is cool) this was settled on as a stock reply.
Since that is a commercial theme or plugin, we ask that you please go to their official support channel, so you can get support from the people who know it best.
[support link]
Forum volunteers are also not given access to commercial products, so they would not know why it is not working properly. Other community members who may have faced your issue might be able to help you but your best bet is your product’s developer. Keep in mind we encourage you to use the official support venues, as it allows the developers to be aware of issues with their code and gives back to the community in a more robust way.
Which will work fine. If someone is asking for support for nulled product or abandoned theme then that’s a different matter. Also if an author routinely uses the volunteer support forums for the customers then a shoulder tap will happen to that author.
Use of the “user moderation” flag in the forums
The phrase “user moderation” being a euphemism for the bozo flag. The bozo word is problematic. 😉
Otto pointed out that the bozo flag isn’t meant to timeout users but more “this guy shouldn’t be causing this many people to get notification emails” flag. If someone is spamming the forums then block their account. If someone is behaving like a jerk, then escalate to the #forums Slack channel or ping Otto. The big hammer of doom can be used if necessary (and as a last resort).
If a moderator sees an account that’s been flagged and there isn’t anything in that account’s recent posts that shows why then unbozo the account.
Read the meetup transcript in the Slack archives. (A Slack account is required)